Ever wanted to work at Radioactive but, hmm, you’ve heard that nursery rhyme about our home city of Gloucester and frankly, you’ve put too much trust in that vagabond ‘Dr’ Foster’s word?
Wellll, he’s a charlatan and a liar and I JUST WON’T STAND FOR IT.
… ahem.
We’ve just put a hybrid working policy in place.
Which means – we can hire from much further afield.
And if you’re looking for a PR role at most levels (but especially at account manager level – some open job ads here), I and we want to hear from you.
Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.
I’ll start again.
We are in the oddest recruitment market I’ve ever experienced.
We pay well. Our policies are industry-leading. We’ve won multiple best place to work awards (and have just been shortlisted for these upcoming ones!). We do great work.
And yet, recruitment has been tough.
While we’ve never before had an issue with attracting CVs, conversations recently tend to get to ‘I love what you guys are about, buuut… I’d prefer a job working more from home.’
It’s a hard thing to hear as somebody that believes we’re (certainly creatively) better in-person. There’s so much learning by osmosis, especially as a younger PR person – and that’s before talking about the friends you make and the career opportunities.
But it’s where we are as an industry, right now, the pandemic fresh in everybody’s minds, and we need to go with the wave instead of pushing back against it.
With that in mind, the cost of living crisis (we increased everybody’s base salary earlier in the year by ~10%) AND a recession on the horizon, we can’t fail but to recognise the financial, environmental and time impact commuting has on our team and future hires.
So, we are adopting a hybrid office and working from home (anywhere!) policy, starting in September, working normal hours.
The hybrid aspect is: one day a week in the office as a minimum. Tuesdays.
We’ll use it for creative meetings, reviews and other meetings that work better in person.
For people we employ with a commute of 90 or more minutes and unless the role absolutely doesn’t need the touchpoint, we’ll ask them to be in every other Tuesday. Further afield and hey, let’s, as our transatlantic friends say, open up a dialogue.
This gives us all flexibility. We’ve already had team members say that they’d prefer to work from the office more than the one day a week – some peoples’ home environment just isn’t set up for home working, and we’ve had people say that they’re excited about the change, too.
We’ve been clear that a hybrid approach isn’t a work perk or benefit, but a strategic decision to continue to build a great agency while recognising external influences on the business and our industry.
We aren’t bound by this decision and it might not be forever – if we’ve been shown anything these last few years, it’s the reinforcement of the ‘there’s no constant but change’ mantra!
If it’s deemed not to be working well, we will make the right decisions for the business and team and about-turn, but it is the right decision for right now.
Again with the job ads:
Not one of these, but fancy yourself at Radioactive? Email, say hi on LinkedIn or Twitter. Tell us a bit about yourself.